O'Hare plan to cost $11-bil.: city

The city late Friday released a report stating that it will cost upwards of $11 billion to fully modernize O'Hare International Airport in the next decade or so--well above the figure usually cited in its campaign to add more runways at O'Hare.

The O'Hare Master Plan the city filed with federal authorities puts in one document a range of runway, terminal, airport maintenance and other capital projects that the city has unveiled in various forms in recent years. Officials said the plan includes little that is really new, and is a "maximum case" plan that can and will be scaled back if airline demand falls.

But O'Hare expansion foes immediately seized on the document as proof that enlarging O'Hare will be far more costly than city officials are admitting even now.

"If they're going to make expansion work, they have to build terminals to go along with the runways. And they've got to build (access) roads, too," said Joseph Karaganis, attorney for the Suburban O'Hare Commission. The city's earlier numbers were "considerably understated," he said.

The Master Plan includes three sets of projects that the city has outlined in separate forums since 1999. Those are the on-going new-runway plan, known as the O'Hare Modernization Plan, estimated to cost $6.6 billion in 2003 dollars; the currently shelved World Gateway plan for new terminals and gates, estimated to cost $2.6 billion in 1999 dollars, and regular, fairly minor repaving projects that currently cost about $100 million a year.

Officials, including city Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker and airport consultant Ramon Ricando, told reporters in a briefing Friday that the Master Plan is designed to outline all the things that could be done by 2013, if necessary, to meet federal aviation-demand projections. The cost of each of those three major elements has not changed since each was separately announced, they said.

The program mostly would be funded with bonds backed by airline ticket-tax and landing-fee revenues, and is flexible to accommodate changing conditions, officials said. The plan is "totally demand driven," Deputy Aviation Commissioner John Harris said.

While charges to airline and their passengers would rise, O'Hare pricing would remain competitive with other large facilities, officials added.

Officials conceded that some of the cost projections are years out of date, and said they might be able to update the numbers later Friday.

The plan does not examine whether it would be cheaper or more efficient to instead build a new airport in south suburban Peotone, as the Suburban O'Hare Commission wants.

"O'Hare's problems can only be solved at O'Hare," said Rosemarie Andolino, Mayor Richard Daley's point person on runway expansion. The fact that Dallas-based American Airlines recently moved dozens of flights to O'Hare from St. Louis shows that O'Hare has price advantages for major carriers, she said.

The plan does not include the cost of any road improvements needed outside the airport, such as new and widened roads for promised western access to O'Hare from its DuPage County side.

Another commission spokesman, former federal aviation official and technical consultant Joseph Del Bazo, said the figures the city cited already are out of date, with Gateway alone expected to cost at least $3.8 billion, according to other city documents.

The Master Plan was filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. The city will hold a "public outreach session" on the document at 4 p.m. March 3 at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Schiller Park. The document is posted at www.ohare.com/masterplan.